Major Hollywood studios Disney, Paramount, Sony, Universal and Warner, plus relative newcomer Netflix, are all members of the Motion Picture Association (MPA). They have something else in common too.

Every single minute of every single day, rain or shine, people can be found pirating their movies and TV shows online. In Netflix’s case, that means every single piece of content the company has ever produced.

For studios with longer histories and huge catalogs of movies and TV shows, piracy doesn’t win the Oscar for Total Content Coverage , but still gets top marks for effort on top of its annual lifetime achievement award. Hollywood’s corporate sheen and projections of wealth have a tendency to suffocate public empathy, but on any level, that must be pretty intolerable.

Lawsuit Against PrimeWire

When Hollywood sued PrimeWire in late 2021, the only surprise was the timing. For more than a decade, PrimeWire had played a key role in illegally streaming many thousands of movies and TV shows, perhaps hundreds of millions of times.

The studios received annual licensing payments of absolutely nothing but were spending money on lawyers in site-blocking actions in multiple countries. PrimeWire’s operator/s never appeared in any of them, most likely too busy running the site and circumventing site-blocking orders.

The same applied in the U.S. lawsuit. In the site’s absence, the studios’ attorneys methodically obtained an injunction to shut PrimeWire down, but faced with overseas entities reluctant to take action, PrimeWire never went completely offline.

Can’t Kill What You Can’t See

Links to movies and TV shows did disappear from PrimeWire for a while but the studios weren’t taking the bait. They were already engaged in a compelling investigation to identify PrimeWire’s operator/s.

In most shutdown operations, unmasking the target is a priority. Taking a domain or shutting down hosting is the equivalent of shooting a zombie in the body; somewhat irritating but easy to recover from. Unmasking, on the other hand, opens up the possibility of a clean headshot and the elimination of potential resurrections.

Studios Win Lawsuit

In December 2022, the studios’ hard work and patience paid off when they were awarded $20.7m in statutory copyright infringement damages. PrimeWire’s conduct was slammed by the judge as “willful” and “particularly egregious,” with a particular focus on the fact that the site’s operators had avoided his courtroom.

Whether those barbed comments were ever heard at PrimeWire HQ, wherever that might be, is unknown. More importantly, the operator/s of PrimeWire were never found and still remain anonymous. The likelihood of the studios receiving $20.7m seems vanishingly small. Likewise, more than $417,000 racked up on attorneys fees.

And the Overall Winner is….

At the time of writing, PrimeWire is still operating from primewire.tf, a domain that should’ve been seized, but clearly has not. On pages where movies are listed, links to third-party hosting sites, including 2embed, OnionShare, CrocoVid, and HDOnline, supply the same content the studios spent a fortune trying to take down.

On this basis, it would be easy to conclude that the lawsuit was a waste of time and an even bigger waste of money. After all, what’s the use of a $20.7m judgment when nobody knows who’s supposed to pay it? Perhaps the bigger question is whether it would’ve been paid even under different circumstances.

The key question, then, is whether the MPA’s lawsuit achieved its main objective.

When the MPA sued PrimeWire in 2021, the site had been enjoying “approximately 20 million monthly visits.” Infringement levels were reported as “breathtaking” along with the following statement:

“In less than three years, [PrimeWire’s] U.S. user base has grown from less than 1 million monthly visits to approximately 20 million monthly visits,” the plaintiffs wrote.

Three or four months after the lawsuit was filed, traffic levels began to fall.

Blatantly repurposing the MPA’s original traffic statement provides a fairly accurate representation of the position today.

Three years after the MPA filed its lawsuit, PrimeWire’s entire user base has shrunk from 20 million monthly visits to less than a million monthly visits.

Who knows what PrimeWire’s operators have going on elsewhere, but PrimeWire.tf is obviously alive. Or perhaps it’s just not dead. Hard to say for sure.

Image Credit: InspiredImages/Pixabay

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Brazil’s crackdown against pirate sites, IPTV services, infringing apps, and other mechanisms delivering illegal content to the masses, continues to press ahead.

In the wake of similar operations in previous years, including action reported in August 2022 , a new phase of Brazil’s ‘Operation 404’ anti-piracy initiative was announced on Tuesday.

Operation 404.5 – Phase 5

The launch of the 5th phase of Operation 404 is described by Brazil’s Ministry of Justice and Public Security (MJSP) as an “international mobilization” coordinated by the MJSP, through the National Secretariat for Public Security (Senasp), with support from police in eight states.

“The objective is the removal of audio and video content, such as games and music, blocking and suspension of illegal streaming websites and applications, de-indexing of content in search engines and removal of profiles and pages on social networks,” an MJSP announcement reads.

“In this 5th phase, eleven people were arrested: four in São Paulo, two in Paraná, one in Bahia and four in Minas Gerais,” the government ministry reports.

Search and seizure warrants to locate computer equipment were executed in the states of Pernambuco, São Paulo, Paraná, Minas Gerais, Rio Grande do Sul, Bahia, Ceará and Rio de Janeiro.

“199 illegal streaming and gaming sites and 63 music apps were also removed, in addition to blocking 128 domains,” the ministry says.

A total of six “messaging app channels” with more than 4,000 subscribers were also blocked, reportedly for distributing music that had not been officially released.

International Cooperation

The local operation received significant international support. Authorities say they collaborated with the UK’s Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit and the British Embassy, Peruvian intellectual property protection agency INDECOPI, MPA Latin American, anti-piracy group Alianza, and US-based videogame industry group Entertainment Software Alliance (ESA).

TorrentFreak obtained what appears to be a notice directed toward visitors to seized sites and domains. In addition to the groups listed above, it reveals the participation of the UK’s Intellectual Property Office, the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, Brazil-based music industry group APDIF, and global music industry group IFPI.

According to the latest figures, Operation 404 has led to the blocking of 1,974 websites and 783 apps since it began in 2019. The names of the sites and apps are never mentioned in material released to the public.

During a Ministry of Justice press conference Tuesday, there was a clear effort to associate pirate sites with malware and a “certainty” that people downloading music or watching pirate streams would have their private information exposed.

That led to a moment of unexpected dark humor (and concerned faces) when a journalist suddenly mentioned a Globo report containing claims that Brazil operated a secret system capable of monitoring the locations of up to 10,000 people by simply entering their phone numbers.

Focus on Pirate TV Services

A key focus area for Brazilian authorities is the illegal TV market, encompassing pirate IPTV services, illegal streaming websites, and the flood of set-top boxes that have saturated the local market.

In a late December 2022 announcement, Brazil’s National Film Agency (ANCINE) revealed a “reformulation” of its anti-piracy operations. Citing overlapping activities that risked straying into areas where the National Telecommunications Agency (ANATEL) has authority, ANCINE said that it would “ move away ” from actions targeting the TV piracy market.

Moving forward, ANCINE said that its focus would be on the protection of locally produced audiovisual works. As a result, technical cooperation with the Motion Picture Association in Latin America would come to an end .

The involvement of the MPA in the 5th phase of Operation 404 suggests that overall cooperation continued.

Earlier this year, ANATEL said that its work to disrupt the pirate TV market would continue using various means. Increased pressure on the sale of non-certified, non-approved set-top boxes, for example, and actions against illegal pay TV services that distribute content via the internet or otherwise rely on it.

Following our report last summer that Brazil planned to visit Portugal and Spain to learn more about their ISP blocking programs, we can confirm those visits went ahead and that Brazil views widespread blocking as a key weapon in the fight against piracy.

ANCINE and ANATEL Announce New Partnership

After announcing the signing of a ‘Technical Cooperation Agreement’ last week, it appears that ANCINE and ANATEL will now work together to combat pirate TV services.

The agreement covers an initial period of 24 months and will see ANCINE tracking and monitoring pirate services. Based on ANCINE’s complaints, ANATEL is expected to issue instructions to ISPs for the services to be blocked.

“With this exchange of information, ANCINE will signal the content that is being transmitted illegally and ANATEL may request the blocking of the channel or the pirated site”, says ANATEL’s Moisés Moreira.

“The idea of ​​this exchange of information is to have speed, because in a case involving a sports match, for example, you have to be quick. It’s a different scenario from a website or channel that is, for example, airing a TV series.”

Last month ANATEL said it had already begun blocking IP addresses in an effort to disrupt ‘ gatonets ‘, a mishmash of subscription piracy TV services accessed via set-top decoders, IPTV devices, and various software applications.

In a move designed to protect Japanese animation content, last month Brazilian authorities said they had shut down two of the largest dedicated anime piracy sites in the region.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

In the wake of the music industry’s destruction of Napster, hopes of a file-sharing vacuum were overwhelmed by a laundry list of protocols and software clients, some pre-existing, some new.

DCC, Gnutella, Freenet, eDonkey2000, Kazaa/FastTrack, WinMX, Bearshare, Grokster, Morpheus – the list went on and on – but with no social media, various news and discussion forums took off. Sites like Slyck, Unite the Cows, and Zeropaid became the subreddits of the day, but even 20+ years ago, these platforms were hardly a piracy free-for-all, far from it.

Unlike today, where users happily post direct links to infringing content on social media in their own name , two decades ago – in a legal environment far less developed than it is today – that was generally forbidden and respected as such.

Reddit’s /r/piracy, which celebrated its one-millionth member this week, has an exponentially larger task on its hands but, considering its scale, does a remarkably good job of stifling users intent on breaking its rules and ultimately getting the community banned by Reddit’s administrators. Other piracy subs haven’t been so lucky.

Reddit Bans For Excessive Infringment

During the first half of 2022 alone, Reddit banned 1,543 subreddits for excessive copyright infringement. Many of those went down in flames after failing to self-censor, but that’s not the only way to break up a community.

Reddit’s /r/iptv subredditt was created on Mar 6, 2011, and with 123,000+ members, ranks in the top 1% of subreddits according to data in its sidebar .

For those starting out in the world of pirate IPTV services or those already established, /r/iptv was a thriving community to learn about IPTV, discuss services and the pros and cons of software, solve technical issues, and much more. Today the community is almost completely silent.

The reasons for this have two key components. Firstly, /r/iptv’s moderators have a history of ensuring that the subreddit stays within Reddit’s global rules. That’s obviously important given its connections to related (but not necessarily affiliated) subreddits.

Generated using Anvaka’s SayIt , the image above reveals the names of subreddits related to /r/iptv, of which many have already been banned:

/r/RedditbayPro, /r/TheSellSpot, /r/IPTVresell, /r/IPTV_Services, /r/iptv4us, /r/Goodieiptvsolutions, /r/RedditBay_Official, /r/iptvsellers, /r/shoppingbay

How the IPTV Subreddit Avoided the Ban Hammer

Using the Wayback Machine we can see that in 2015, when the subreddit gained enough traction to boast 431 subscribers, the rules were simple: “ There are none. As long as it’s related to IPTV its good to go. ” That uncomplicated approach continued in 2016 and 2017 .

In 2018, most likely due to IPTV providers continually advertising their services, there were no rules “ Except for spam . You will get banned immediately.”

By 2019, there were rules . No link spamming, no posting IPTV service reviews, and no asking for service recommendations.

New Rules to Prevent Breaches of Reddit’s Rules

2020 was a big year for new rules. In addition to the three new rules introduced earlier, another nine were added to the list.

In summary, don’t post links any links to IPTV services or anything related to them, don’t post ‘sensitive info’, don’t solicit IPTV business in public or via message, don’t ask or provide trials, don’t post ads, don’t even name IPTV services, and don’t mention other subreddits Discord/Telegram channels involved in IPTV.

The following year saw a few new restrictions including “don’t mention you have customers” or link to YouTube channels mentioning IPTV. Certain rules came with a warning that Reddit could issue a community-wide ban if they were breached – asking to buy or offering to sell IPTV subscriptions, for example.

15 Rules Essentially Banned Everything

By the end of 2022, submitters on /r/iptv had to ensure that 15 rules hadn’t been broken. That triggered a moderator pre-approval process and a wait for their post to appear. Some may believe this was an unnecessary response but it was obvious the climate had changed and backs were pressed firmly to the wall.

According to the sub’s moderators, every day people requested IPTV service recommendations, people named them, and people tried to sell them. Scammers were also attempting to extract money from the less experienced members. Something else was causing issues too.

“[T]he providers are at risk of getting shut down when you talk about them on Reddit. This seems like a simple concept to grasp, but many don’t understand that you can be talking to anyone on Reddit,” an announcement from the moderators explained.

“Do not respond to DMs asking what service you use. You think you’re being helpful but you have no idea who that person is and what they are doing with the info. 3 years ago things were much different.”

The announcement went on to warn IPTV resellers that doing business on Reddit and social media in general, meant they were exposing themselves to “potential legal settlements, lawsuits and even prison time.”

Overreaction or Common Sense?

Opinions will vary but facts tend to speak for themselves. As multiplying arrests and other action showed, the warnings were valid. By selling subscriptions on social media, Reddit in particular, people were indeed exposing themselves to unnecessary risks. For some, those risks turned into a real-life crisis.

Make no mistake, Reddit is a goldmine of information that has been used in anti-piracy investigations in the past and is currently being used to obtain information on services today. Perhaps not from /r/iptv though.

When filtering by ‘new’ posts on /r/iptv today, the most recent are six months old. It appears that some posts have been ‘cleared up’ but as things stand, new public posts on the subreddit are more or less a thing of the past.

But as the moderators pointed out, few other choices were available to them, short of shutting the entire subreddit down. Or have Reddit do it for them.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Mid-February, the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) announced that MyCima , one of the largest pirate streaming sites in the Middle East, had been shut down.

Reportedly operated from Alexandria and offering 12,000 movies and 26,000 TV series, MyCima enjoyed around 50 million visits per month.

Following an ACE referral, Egyptian authorities took action to shut the site down. MyCima’s most popular domain – myciiima.autos – went offline along with around 70 others.

ACE thanked Egypt’s Prime Minister and the Ministry of Internal Affairs for protecting intellectual property, while two new members of the ACE coalition – MENA-based OSN and MBC Group – were acknowledged for their work in shutting MyCima down.

Not Quite Dead Yet: MyCima Sewn Back Together

According to Egyptian mythology, Osiris was a much-loved king who was killed by Seth, his jealous brother, who chopped him up and scattered the 14 pieces all over Egypt. MyCima had many more pieces, notably around 70 domains. While 13 pieces of Osiris were found and sewn back together, one was never found. An important piece of MyCima was overlooked too.

In January 2023, myciiima.autos alone received more than 43.3m visits, making it the 10th most-visited domain in Egypt. Many other domains redirected in and out, among them mycimaa.tv. Domains redirecting to mycimaa.tv were numerous too – myciiima.bond, myciiima.boats, myciiima.makeup and myciiima.monster, among others.

At some point in January, Myciiima.autos redirected to mycimaa.tv and on February 2, 2023, myciiima.autos was updated and fell out of use. Also on February 2, a new domain was registered and connected to many existing domains. Wecima.tube appears to be MyCima’s new home. Or one of them at least

MyCima? No. Wecima? Yeah

Given these and other connections not detailed here, there seems little doubt that WeCima is just MyCima with a new name and a new domain.

The site was already pretty glossy, so a new coat of paint probably wasn’t needed. That being said, absolutely no effort has been made to portray this as a new platform.

It’s unclear why the site’s operators are still in business, especially given the big shutdown announcements in February that received regional and international attention. The involvement of OSN and what this resurrection means for them is made especially clear on WeCima’s front page.

Site Changes Pirated Content Policy

On WeCima’s homepage, under the top row of movie and TV show cover images, is some Arabic text. It’s been edited at least once, maybe twice, over the past week or so. The image below shows the notice in English, as it appeared a few days ago.

Taken at face value, this clearly suggests that content owned by TV network OSN has been removed. That could be for any number of reasons, but the most obvious is that MyCima/WeCima are under the impression that removal either removes or reduces the risk of being targeted again.

Viewed from a different perspective, the site might be more concerned about local companies’ content than content owned by companies located overseas. A little more weight is given to that theory with a more recent update to the site’s main page.

It appears that while OSN content still won’t feature on the site, the same now holds true for all local content. This stated position is a far cry from the site being completely closed down and is almost certainly a big diversion from what the rest of the ACE coalition thought would happen.

But Will it Last?

After being chopped into pieces by Seth and sewn back together by Isis, Osiris lived for just a single day. His legacy, a son he conceived despite lacking a crucial body part, lived on. A single domain allowed WeCima to live on but the site is taking no chances.

Since wecima.tube was registered on February 2, 2023, the registrations have barely stopped. Domains including weciima.motorcycles and weciima.makeup are just two examples from a list of several dozen domains that are either active already and pointing at WeCima, or waiting for the right moment to do so.

Other resurrections may be happening elsewhere in Egypt too.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

In an effort to make ends meet, many people in the UK are cutting back on luxuries. Fewer nights out or perhaps none at all. Downgrading Netflix or even dumping it altogether.

Subscription television is even more expensive and often demands longer-term commitments people simply can’t afford. To some, cheap but illegal streaming services might prove tempting but it appears that Sky TV and police in the UK are working hard to limit supply.

Police & Sky Conduct Raids

A statement by the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) says that in partnership with Police Scotland and subscription broadcaster Sky, officers have executed a series of raids around the UK as part of an illegal streaming crackdown.

Officers reportedly searched four premises in London, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Stoke. Four people were arrested on “suspicion of involvement” in the illegal streaming of premium content, including channels belonging to Sky. During these operations, computer equipment, laptops and phones were also seized.

‘Disrupted’ Services / 500K Customers

Given that the names of the services have not been announced by police, it’s impossible to say what effect the raids may have had on the targeted services. That being said, the announcement itself carries enough information to cautiously assess a few things.

“Officers believe that the illegal streaming services disrupted by the operation had more than 500,000 customers.”

The word ‘believe’ obviously removes a level of certainty here and use of the word ‘disruption’ could mean that no services were actually shut down. No doubt some media reports will take the ‘500,000 customers’ comment and run with it but nowhere here does it say that 500,000 lost access to one or more services.

That being said, beginning around February 20/21 until around February 25/26, social media ‘chatter’ showed a significant increase in people from the UK, particularly in the Midlands and further north, complaining about IPTV services going offline.

Police Delivered Cease and Desist Notices

In addition to the four arrests, police say that more than 200 ‘cease and desist’ notices were delivered to individuals “suspected of running illegal streaming services around the country.”

The definitions of ‘running’ and ‘service’ aren’t made clear, but on the basis that 200 physically separate IPTV services are unlikely to exist in the UK alone, this may be a reference to people who act as resellers.

If that’s the case, 200 is a completely believable number, and depending on how many customers each reseller has, the number of connections at stake if the cease-and-desist notices do their job could be significant.

Organized Crime, Malware Warnings

According to Matt Hibbert, Director of Anti-Piracy at Sky, these nationwide actions “made a significant impact against individuals involved in serious organized crime.”

PIPCU Detective Chief Inspector Gary Robinson says that “organized criminal groups often view the distribution of illegal streaming services as a low-risk, high-reward crime,” that can “expose end users to the risks of data theft, fraud and malware.”

These types of statements are certainly not unusual and there’s no doubt that, depending on the contact point, IPTV subscription buyers face at least some element of risk. The problem is getting people to believe that the threats are real and not just another deterrent message that only applies to other people.

Vultures Move In

What was glaringly obvious to us during the period IPTV downtime was being reported in February, was the number of ‘people’ posting on social media offering IPTV services with a billion channels and billions of movies as a good replacement.

Just like the people who send bogus delivery or banking alerts by SMS, fraud is the endgame and there is no service. People can try and report them, but that rarely works out.

Police say that of the four arrested in February, one person has been charged in relation to intellectual property theft and three people have since been released under investigation.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

The UK Government’s Intellectual Property Office has published a new edition of its Online Copyright Infringement Tracker study.

The annual survey aims to understand the piracy habits of citizens aged 12 and above. This is the 12th wave of the report and relates to consumption during 2022. The overarching trend is one of overall piracy rates remaining mostly static for the past six years but the details paint a more interesting bigger picture.

Overall Infringement Rate Up

In common with previous years, the latest study details consumption habits for a wide range of content, including movies, TV shows, music, live sports, video games, software, and ebooks.

Overall infringement rates (respondents who accessed any content illegally) increased from 25% to 32% in 2022. However, the government says the figure should be interpreted with caution due to new methods of access being included each year. Nevertheless, overall infringement does appear to be increasing.

Movie piracy hit an overall infringement rate of 23%, up 4% from its previous high recorded in wave 11 (2021). TV show piracy increased 1% over the previous high recorded back in 2019, but once again the government urges caution.

“The increase in most categories was driven by a greater proportion of individuals using a mix of legal and illegal methods, rather than the purely (i.e. only) illegal group. For most categories the purely illegal group has remained stable and low,” the Intellectual Property Office explains.

When it comes to music streaming, ‘low’ is an overstatement. An incredible 97% of music consumers in the UK relied entirely on legal sources last year, with a negligible 2% using legal and illegal sources and 0% relying exclusively on illegal sources.

Give or take, that’s been the position for the last four years. Spoiling the party a little are the 9.2 million people estimated to have downloaded at least one track illegally in 2022.

Figures for movie streaming reveal that 83% used only legal sources, 15% relied on a mix, and just 3% pirated everything they watched. Overall, these rates represent a couple of percentage points change in favor of piracy over the figures reported last year.

For TV show streaming, the rates are 86%, 12%, and 2% respectively, with legal-only down three points, mixed legal/illegal up three, and illegal-only consumption static. The picture in 2022 is broadly in line with data published in 2019.

Overall Rates of Infringement

Overall infringement rates in the report should be viewed in context. Digital magazines, for example, have an infringement rate of 41%, meaning that four out of ten people who consume that type of content did so from an illegal source at least once in the previous three months.

With an infringement rate of 38% overall, software piracy is much higher than music (25%), movies (24%), and TV shows (19%), but far more people consume content from the latter three categories. In the case of TV shows, a 19% infringement rate equates to 9% of the entire sample, a total of 6.2 million infringers overall.

The figures for those who consume music, movies, and TV shows completely legally, mixed, or entirely illegally, have now returned to pre-COVID levels. The same is true for live sports streamers, albeit with a key difference.

While the music and movie industries still oppose piracy, overt anti-piracy messaging from these sectors has been relatively low-key for the past few years. In the live sports sector, campaigns led by the Federation Against Copyright Theft and UK police, on behalf of the Premier League, Sky, and BT Sports, have been relentless.

According to government figures, continuous anti-piracy campaigning by the live sports sector has produced figures that are no better than those achieved by the movie and music sectors with minimal messaging.

The report suggests that attitudes towards anti-piracy campaigns have changed. Where “authoritative” tones and threats of disconnection were previously seen as effective, many participants now call for an ‘understanding’ tone and for campaigns from the industry to “feel cooperative and working with, not punishing, the consumer.”

Illegal Streaming of Live Sports

In 2020, overall infringement rates among consumers of live sports sat at 37%. In 2021, the overall rate dropped to 29%, with 71% using only legal sources, 18% using a mix, and exclusively illegal content consumers at 12%.

In the most recent wave covering 2022, overall infringement of live sports reached 36%, roughly on par with 2020 levels. In 2022, that equates to 3.9 million people streaming at least some sports content illegally.

The way people consumed live sports streams is also going in the wrong direction. Those consuming content entirely from legal sources dropped from 71% in 2021 to 64% in 2022. Consumers of a legal/illegal mix increased by three points to 21%. Consumers of strictly illegal content increased to 15% versus the 12% reported a year earlier.

Whether these figures will deteriorate further during 2022 remains to be seen, but price rises recently announced by UK subscription broadcasters seem unlikely to help. That’s also the case in respect of other persistent problems in the video sector.

The UK Loves Entertainment But Can’t Always Afford It

Unsurprisingly, the study found that entertainment is valued by the UK, particularly so during the extraordinary circumstances of recent years.

“Previous waves during the pandemic had shown how entertainment could serve almost as a companion during times of lockdown where some felt isolated. Now, entertainment was said to help many by distracting them from uncertainty around money and anxiety around going back into a world without social restrictions for some,” the report reads.

“However, the rise in the cost of living experienced across the UK meant that while participants wanted to keep consuming all their entertainment at the same rate they had been, some were thinking about canceling some of their subscriptions to save money.”

Cutting Back: Value for Money or Nothing

Despite people feeling the pinch in the UK and beyond, streaming music services seem to have hit the sweet spot on price, quality, and service. For roughly £2.50 per week, almost all music is available in unlimited quantities and for everything else, YouTube will suffice.

With piracy rates close to zero, the music industry has shown that it’s possible to compete with free and make a profit at the same time. Movies, TV shows and live sports have other problems to solve but in the meantime, these are the key content areas most likely to face issues.

“[W]here content was split across multiple platforms,” the report notes, “some felt they could not justify paying for more than one or two.”

UK football fans are well aware that subscribing to three platforms doesn’t get them everything they want to watch, so that doesn’t sound particularly encouraging. Losing fans to other activities sounds like an even worse proposition.

Other than canceling Sky subscriptions, alternatives cited by respondents include gardening, watching more content on Netflix and BBC iPlayer, and playing video games. At least one respondent spoke about re-reading old books and the possibility of getting rid of them altogether.

“Recovering from the Covid pandemic and all the price rises has been really hard. I definitely don’t buy as many books and am looking for free reads more often. I’ve just got all my novels out of storage to read to save a bit of money and might have to start selling them off,” one participant said.

VPN Use in the UK

With privacy concerns on the increase and site-blocking rampant in the UK, internet users of all kinds are turning to VPNs (Virtual Private Networks). The study found that across all categories, respondents who used a VPN specifically for obtaining entertainment content were more likely to have infringed compared to those who used a VPN for activity other than entertainment content consumption.

“For most categories, differences between those who used a VPN for entertainment content and those who did not were large (10%+) for most categories, levels of infringement were similar for those who used a VPN but not for entertainment content and those who did not use a VPN at all,” the report notes.

The 12th wave of the UK’s Online Copyright Infringement Tracker can be found here

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Numerous reports published by the European Union over the past decade have linked higher levels of content piracy with lacking availability of legal content.

Restricted access to legal offers fuels the perception among citizens that piracy is an acceptable option, which in turn leads to higher levels of pirated content consumption. One way to combat that is by making content available and raising awareness, through the EU’s Agorateka platform , for example.

Member State Lithuania has faced criticism for its high piracy rates, including an EU finding in 2022 that 43% of young people mainly access movies from illegal sources. However, when Agorateka sends citizens to the country’s “Buy Legally” portal which doesn’t appear to exist , that doesn’t help when the same EU report ( pdf ) found that 50% of people said they would stop pirating content if it was made available legally.

Filmai – A Pirate Movie Service Like No Other

Filmai is the most famous movie and TV show piracy site in Lithuania. Founded in 2009 when access to legal content was exponentially worse than it is even today, Filmai is no ordinary piracy platform.

So that Lithuanians can access and enjoy international movies, the site hires translators and voice actors to create Lithuanian language streams and downloads. Since this costs money, Lithuanian visitors mostly pay to access the service. In 2021, it was revealed that Lithuanian officials were Filmai users.

At the same time, two alleged administrators of the site were under criminal investigation. Filmai had been infiltrated by anti-piracy investigators posing as translators. The team reportedly earned 111.17 euros for their work, and payment was sent to their PayPal account. The fates of two alleged operators of Filmai were announced yesterday.

One Conviction, One Acquittal

Following a legal process that took more than five years, relating to the activities of two men between 2010 and 2017, the Kaunas District Court handed down its decision last Friday. One of the defendants was acquitted of all wrongdoing but the other wasn’t so lucky.

The Lithuanian man, who hasn’t been named, was ordered to pay almost 50,000 euros in fines to rightsholders including 38,000 euros to the Lithuanian Copyright Collective Administration Association (LATGA) and 11,000 euros to All Media Lithuania (TV3 television).

The most significant component of the sentence is a confiscation order. Assets worth almost 200,000 euros will be seized from the defendant, who is also required to compensate LATGA for its legal costs.

LATGA Celebrates Win

In a statement issued yesterday, LATGA welcomes the district court’s verdict since it also serves as a reminder that takedown notices and ISP blocking are not the only anti-piracy options available to rightsholders.

“The legal acts also provide for the possibility to apply for the application of criminal liability to specific persons who administer illegal websites and receive financial benefits from such activities, at the same time claiming against them claims for compensation for property damage,” says LATGA director Laura Baškevičienė.

“This court decision only confirms that copyright violations are taken seriously and can lead to serious legal consequences.”

Filmai Appears to Be Thriving

While Filmai has suffered some downtime over the past few years, the site appears to be thriving. During the last three months of 2022, Filmai.in received around 1.8 million visitors per month, despite the site’s domains being blocked by internet service providers. Legal competitor Go3.lt receives around 1.9 million visits per month.

Also of interest is the significant amount of traffic Filmai attracts from abroad. Around 38% of the site’s total traffic comes from outside Lithuania, with the United Kingdom (19%), Norway (7%), Sweden (4%) taking the top spots according to SimilarWeb stats.

For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, visitors from Ireland recently increased by 78% and now account for 3% of Filmai’s overall traffic. All of this helps to maintain Filmai’s position among the top 120 most-visited sites in Lithuania.

Finally, it appears that Filmai also shared some of its spoils with the state. The entity behind the site paid around 287,000 euros in VAT over the years and between 2015 and 2017, declared another 56,000 euros in VAT as payable. That in itself doesn’t render the site legal but it does suggest demand in what appears to be an underserved market.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Member states of the European Union must allow rightsholders to protect their rights. Enforcement measures are of “paramount importance” according to Article 3 of the Enforcement Directive.

After 15 years of tuning across the EU, site-blocking injunctions are a priority enforcement tool.

Rightsholder applications target ISPs with evidence of subscribers and pirate sites infringing their rights. Since the ISPs now have ‘actual knowledge’ of infringement, they block the sites while maintaining liability protection under Articles 12 to 15 of the E-Commerce Directive.

Administrative Programs and Live Sports Blocking

Italy operates an administrative blocking program in accordance with Article 14(3) of the E-Commerce Directive. Telecoms regulator AGCOM (“the authority”) often issues ISP blocking instructions within days of an application, but to tackle live sporting events transmitted via pirate IPTV streams, rightsholders demand more.

Rapid blocking has been at the planning stage in Italy for some time, with a key focus on protecting Serie A, Italy’s top football/soccer league.

Early this month, the introduction of ISP blocking “ without delay and in real time ” took another step forward and this week, AGCOM revealed the next stage.

Rapid Blocking Put to Public Consultation

During a December 20 meeting, AGCOM announced that new powers to counter the threats posed by live, unlicensed IPTV streams, would be put to public consultation.

Under the umbrella of existing copyright protection regulations (Resolution no. 680/13/CONS – Italian, pdf ) , the focus will be the protection of football matches but will ultimately apply to all live sporting events (Resolution no. 445/22/CONS, Italian, pdf )

“The text submitted for consultation provides for the possibility of inhibiting users’ access to pirated platforms and sites as a precautionary measure in the very first minutes of the broadcast of sporting events,” AGCOM’s announcement reads.

IPTV Blocking and Proactive Measures

While AGCOM’s statement shows overall intent, the important part is the reference to blocking as a ‘precautionary measure’. While it appears that some pirate IPTV streams are indeed detected ‘live’ and then subsequently blocked, Italy prefers an intelligence-based system, similar (if not identical) to the one already deployed in the UK.

Due to continuous monitoring and identification of infringing IPTV streams, those most likely to transmit live matches will be known to AGCOM and its anti-piracy partners before games even begin, probably several days in advance and potentially earlier.

From there it’s simply a case of ISPs blocking the IP addresses while anti-piracy partners monitor for blocking countermeasures.

Consultation WIll Open for 45 Days

AGCOM says it has always been a leader on the anti-piracy front, but new tools are needed to counter the “organized criminals” behind some online piracy operations.

“All interested parties will be able to submit their observations on the measure, for
45 days from the publication of the draft resolution on the Authority’s website,” AGCOM concludes.

The consultation will be published on the AGCOM portal

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

When several major studios filed a copyright lawsuit against PrimeWire last year, it shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise. It did nonetheless – it was a long time coming.

More than a decade ago, a successful pirate streaming site called LetMeWatchThis reportedly ran into domain issues, and after a swift rebranding exercise, returned as 1Channel. What prompted the site to change its name yet again isn’t clear but, after adopting the name PrimeWire , traffic poured in from all over the world.

Due to Hollywood legal action, PrimeWire was among the first 30 sites to be blocked in the UK back in 2013 , but that was just the beginning. Similar blocking injunctions followed in Australia , Ireland , Norway , Denmark , Portugal and beyond.

Despite being given the opportunity to protest at least some of these blocking measures, PrimeWire never appeared in court to mount a defense, even by email. When the MPAA reported the site to the USTR in 2013 , it was hoped PrimeWire would fold but, despite additional reports over subsequent years, it carried on regardless.

Becoming a permanent fixture on the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit’s ‘Infringing Website List’ was meant to increase the pressure. However, as far as we’re aware, Hollywood never filed a lawsuit. Roughly nine years ago the MPA believed PrimeWire’s servers were in Estonia but, while access to hardware can be useful, hard drives can’t be sued.

Movie and TV Giants Sue PrimeWire

Then, out of the blue in December 2021, Paramount, Universal, Warner, Columbia, Disney, and Netflix filed a lawsuit against PrimeWire in the U.S. They demanded millions in damages and an all-important injunction, the first of which was granted early 2022 .

Maintaining its long-held traditions, PrimeWire immediately moved to neutralize potential domain seizures while carrying on as normal , in defiance of the injunction.

Just weeks after that, PrimeWire suddenly ‘went legal’ by removing all links to pirated movies and TV shows, and then pledged to install upload filters to prevent any more piracy. There was even some email correspondence with the plaintiffs which, if anything, was even more surprising.

Traffic Tanks, Hollywood Piles on the Pressure

After removing pirated content, PrimeWire’s traffic immediately collapsed by more than 60%, but the studios weren’t impressed. Based on past behavior patterns, they believed that PrimeWire could make a comeback, so they pressed for a default judgment and permanent injunction.

The court agreed and awarded a partial default judgment with damages to be decided at a later date. PrimeWire was ordered to shut down – whether or not any pirated content was still available via the site. Some registrars still hadn’t complied with the terms of the preliminary injunction, meaning that PrimeWire still had domains and a web presence.

PrimeWire didn’t officially appear in the lawsuit so was never likely to win. Importantly, it didn’t shut down either and in July attempted a comeback but that was soon thwarted by the MPA’s investigators.

Filings in the case during October revealed that the MPA had gone to extraordinary lengths to track down PrimeWire’s operator but had ultimately run into shell companies, various obfuscation measures, and eventually a dead end. Specifically, a small but notorious property in the UK linked to international crime, money laundering, and fried chicken.

MPA Could Not Prove PrimeWire’s Actual Profits

Despite the studios’ best efforts to quantify PrimeWire’s profits, the odds were always stacked against them. Instead, they requested a judgment of $20.7m, which in the scheme of things was pretty reasonable. Earlier this year PrimeWire was allegedly offering 10,000 titles owned by the plaintiff studios and in October 2021, received 20 million visitors from the United States alone.

The studios aimed low by listing just 138 infringed works, but with maximum statutory damages of $150,000 available for each work, that can soon add up. In his judgment dated December 9, Judge Mark C. Scarsi agrees that the anonymous PrimeWire defendants were well aware that their conduct was unlawful.

Particularly Egregious Infringment, Maximum Damages

“The Court finds that Defendants committed willful infringement, meriting an award of enhanced damages. Defendants’ conduct is particularly egregious. Despite Plaintiffs’ repeated attempts to hale Defendants into court, Defendants have either ignored Plaintiffs’ emails or anonymously denied any wrongdoing,” Judge Scarsi’s judgment reads.

“Further, Defendants have evaded the Court’s injunctions by transferring operations to different domain names, citing ‘recent legal action’ on their now-defunct webpage. Additionally, the substantial web traffic Defendants gained from illegally streaming Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works has likely created a heavy windfall in advertising revenue at Plaintiffs’ expense.”

Noting that the defendants’ conduct “leaves little doubt” that maximum statutory damages are warranted, Judge Scarsi highlights the value of the studios’ copyrights, the revenue lost through PrimeWire’s actions, and in particular the negative effect on the legitimate streaming market.

“Defendants’ unauthorized and uncompensated use of the copyrighted works causes significant revenue loss because illegitimate streaming sources, like Defendants’, divert potentially millions of dollars of paid viewership away from licensed sources contributing to Plaintiffs’ revenue streams,” the judgment continues.

“The high value of Plaintiffs’ copyrights also supports a finding that Defendants’ infringement causes significant revenue losses. And finally, maximum statutory damages would serve the purpose of deterring Defendants and others from infringing Plaintiffs’ valuable works.”

In line with the studios’ request, the court awarded maximum statutory damages of $150,000 per work, a total of $20,700,000 for the 138 works in suit. The court also awarded $417,600 in attorneys’ fees, an amount described as “reasonable and appropriate.”

The proposed judgment, final judgment, and minutes can be found here ( 1 , 2 , 3 , pdf)

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.